Musings

Glad Tidings and Space to Mourn

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

As often happens in the wake of a Poem-a-day spree on the blog, when the month (November or April) is over, I neglect the blog. This time, I did begin writing a piece in early December on spiritual gaslighting, but I couldn’t find my way the whole way through it, so I’ve been letting that sit here, waiting for me to come back and give it some energy and focus.

In the meantime, it’s Yuletide, Solstice season, Christmastide, the High Holy Days of the year, and I want to offer some seasonal greetings here at the Turning, the Pause, the Quiet and the Hush, the Between.

I know two things about the Dark Season of the Wheel of the Year: One is that I am physiologically inclined to depression and anxiety when I am not getting enough sunlight. The other is that I love the darkness, the shadows, the dreamtime and storytime, the flickering candles in the dusk, the fogs and mists of winter. So I live in the paradox of that, tending to my mental and physical health the best I can while reveling in the spiritual richness to be found in wandering through the shadows.

As my wise mother says, it can be both/and. I can be tending to my winter sadness AND reveling in the darkness at the same time.

In this season of lights and shadows, may you
revel and celebrate joy,
and sit quietly in the darkness with your shadows,
honor the pain and the memories,
and dance with delight at the new thing coming,
follow the stories of of anguish and horror,
and hold the stories of bravery and kindness,
feast merrily with your beloveds,
and offer food to those who do not have enough,
give in to your weariness, and take your rest,
and stay up all night with the revelers.
Take from the season what you need.
Let it offer you darkness and light, sorrow and joy,
glad tidings and the space to mourn.
May your heart be broken open
as you re-member yourself to the shadows,
as you re-call yourself to the light.

Keep track of your dreams in these days between Solstice and Christmas, between Christmas and New Year, New Year and Epiphany. Notice the persistent images and words that float around you in the day. What messages are you hearing? What words are asking for your attention? What birds and animals keep slipping through the edges of your awareness? Sometime around the New Year, or Epiphany, settle on one word or image or idea. Let that be your guide for the coming season, or the coming year. Between now and the beginning of February, when we celebrate our awareness of the growing light, the quickening of the Earthwomb–this six weeks is a time to consider what we need to bring into the light, and what we need to allow to gestate for a longer time in our own inner darkness.

Now is the time to claim your darkness. It might make me uncomfortable. It may make me afraid. But it’s my own shadow, my own personal cave. This is the time to gently probe the corners with our hands and toes, into the places where the light does not reach. In those places that make us afraid because we do not know them, there may also be treasures hidden. Blessings on your searching. Blessings on your darkness.

Gratitude List:
1. Time with Beloveds
2. The hush, the pause, the quiet, and the riotous revels
3. The spaces for both joy and sadness
4. Morning fog, and birds singing through the fog
5. The merry lights of my Advent candles in their birch candle holders
May we walk in Beauty!

Joyful Kwanzaa to my friends who are celebrating the first fruits: Today is Umoja, or Unity, time to reflect on ways in which we can bring unity in divided situations in the coming year.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” —Mary Oliver

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” ―Susan Sontag

“People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us.” —Wendell Berry

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.” —Mary Oliver

“When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying.”
—Robert A. F. Thurman

“It’s quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people’s dreams.” ―Gayle Forman

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ―Thich Nhat Hanh

“There is still a window of time. Nature can win If we give her a chance.”
—Dr. Jane Goodall

“By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary, everything is sacred.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“I am as conscious as anyone of the gravity of the present situation for [hu]mankind. . . . And yet some instinct, developed in contact with life’s long past, tells me that salvation for us lies in the direction of the very danger the so terrifies us. . . . We are like travelers caught up in a current, trying to make our way back: an impossible and a fatal course. Salvation for us lies ahead, beyond the rapids. We must not turn back—we need a strong hand on the tiller, and a good compass.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Many years from now, when the world I know now is only an echo, my love will still be alive, still be touching hearts and changing minds, still be bringing people a sense of peace and hope. The love we send out does not disappear. It is carried forward by those who receive it, adding their love to ours, sending it forward, a promise made and remade for generations. Rejoice: your love lives forever.” —Steven Charleston

Holding the World In His Antlers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I took the photo this morning just after dawn. The sky was still indigo to the north. To the east, right of the barn a line of tangerine sky was appearing. And the great horned owls were calling from north and south. Sometime when the moon is rising red above the ridge, I want to position his antlers so I can catch the moon in their circle.

If you have followed my images of the stump over the past couple of years, you can see that this year, the surface is cratered. The wood is spongy and fragile, and there have been no new flowerings of mushrooms lately, though the slime molds and other creeping fungi are still having their day. It’s becoming treacherous to walk in the near vicinity of the stump because the roots have begun to rot, leaving troughs which radiate outward.

Gratitude List:
1. My most quiet student became very animated during a class discussion today, and told a story. It is such a satisfying thing for a teacher to hear the most quiet ones speak.
2. Cabbage for supper. Must be those Germanic genes, but cabbage is comfort food.
3. Listening to Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness. So much to learn.
4. Hard conversations
5. Community
May we walk in Beauty!

“…believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” —Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Valarie Kaur: “What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”

“They say to dance like nobody is watching. I think that implies that we are afraid or ashamed to dance in front of the people. I say dance like everybody is watching. Dance like your children are watching, your ancestors, your family. Dance for those who are hurting, those who can’t dance, those who lost loved ones and those who suffer injustices throughout the world. Let every step be a prayer for humanity! Most of all dance for the Creator, who breathed into your soul so you may celebrate this gift of life!” —Supaman, hip hop and Powwow dancer

“Destroy the idea that men should respect women because we are their daughters, mothers, and sisters. Reinforce the idea that men should respect women because we are people.” —Radleigh Lauren

“Let the violence and pain in our world root you even more deeply in your commitment to be kinder and love harder, no matter the person or circumstance. Your great ability to love has everything to do with creating a more peaceful reality on our planet. Your love matters. It makes a critical difference. It helps us all.” —Scott Stabile

“What we would like to do is change the world—make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words—we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.” —Dorothy Day

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” —Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

Gayle Boss, comparing the precarious life of the chickadee to the chosen poverty of St. Francis: “Like the saint wed to Lady Poverty, every winter day the equation of their existence is open: Will there be enough of what they need to take them through the dark night, into tomorrow? Beyond reason, like the saint, they act as if the question is truly an opening, a freedom, a joy.”

“There’s an important distinction between the word ‘cure’ and the word ‘heal.’ In contemporary language, cure means to eradicate an illness or wound. But heal comes from the root “to make whole.” While some grief can not and should never be cured, it can be invited and allowed into one’s way of being in the world.” —from “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner

“The opposite of consumption is not frugality, it is generosity.”
—Raj Patel

“By reciting a myth, the storyteller remembers a creation, and, by remembering, is a part of that creating. It is best understood in that dreadful solecism “walkabout”. In walking, the Australians speak the land. Their feet make it new, now, and in its beginning. And the land speaks to them, now, anew, and in their beginning, by step and breath that meet in its dance, so that land and people sing as one.” —Alan Garner, The Voice That Thunders

“This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories.” —Ben Okri

“So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,
one of which was you.” ―Mary Oliver

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” —Nelson Mandela

“Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.” —Juvenal

“There is a place where words are born of silence,
A place where the whispers of the heart arise.” —Rumi (Barks)

“Midway in our life’s journey,
I went astray
from the straight road
and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood.”
—Dante, first tercet of The Inferno

Last night

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Last day of the month. Last prompt: Last night. That’s the prompt. I decided to make it simple and do a refrain with a bit of free association, and then I tidied it up.

Last night I was haunted by last year’s ghost
Last night I sank to the ground in relief when I remembered my name
Last night I heard you offered solace to a wandering heretic lost in a storm
Last night I dreamed I was standing under a jacaranda tree
that rained purple blossoms on my head
Last night I stayed awake until the sun rose and the moon fell
Last night I slept the whole night through
with a purring cat tucked under my arm
Last night I learned of the secret door that leads to the garden of the moon

Gratitude List:
1. Knitting
2. Intentional Breathing
3. Origami
4. Reading poems out loud
5. Finding my voice
May we walk in Beauty!

“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. Our primary need for the various life forms of the planet is a psychic, rather than a physical, need.” —Thomas Berry

“All through your life, the most precious experiences seemed to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.” —John O’Donohue

“The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.” —Pema Chodrun, From her book Becoming Bodhisattvas

“Quiet the mind enough
so it is the heart
that gives the prayer.”
—Ingrid Goff-Maidoff

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

“People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“Creative acts of social justice constitute life’s highest performance art.” —Rebecca Alban Hoffberger

“If you will, you can become all flame.” —Abba Joseph

“Become all shadow.
Become all light.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.” —Audre Lorde

“The first duty of love is to listen.”
—Paul Tillich

“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.”
—Paul Tillich

“When you go to your place of prayer, don’t try to think too much or manufacture feelings or sensations. Don’t worry about what words you should say or what posture you should take. It’s not about you or what you do. Simply allow Love to look at you—and trust what God sees! God just keeps looking at you and loving you center to center. ” —Richard Rohr

“People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.” —Charles Fort

“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest

Olly Olly Oxen Free!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a “(Blank) Free” Poem.

ollyollyoxenfree!
who are olly’s oxen?
why are they boxed-in
and searching for freedom?
like children running
from hide and seek
or kick-the-can
uncaught uncaptured
last to be found
racing to safe haven
sun setting over the hill
oxen giggles echoing
wiggling into base
safe

I’m trying to drag myself through November and into December right now. I always feel a little guilty about these winter blues, as though I’m not trying hard enough to be energetic, not pushing myself through the blues. I would never tell a depressed person to suck it up and just try harder, so why do I tell myself to do that during November’s blahs and December’s doldrums?

I read a lovely thing today about how trees in our climate need their time of winter rest in order to survive. They actually need to winter. So. Me too. I’m going to let myself winter. Just sit on the couch and read or knit after dark (which feels like all the time when I am home these days). I ran a little this evening, but only a half mile or so. I’ll keep trying to get necessary exercise when I can, because I know that is supposed to help, but I am also going to get more sleep.

Gratitude List:
1. Cloud Dragons
2. I feel like all my classes are really into the class novels right now. I love sharing story with students. (We’re reading Touching Spirit Bear, Catch-22, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
3. Spaghetti Squash
4. Remembering to let myself Winter/hibernate/settle
5. You
May we walk in Beauty!

“Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks. And that’s ok, that’s ok, darling. You are still healing, you are still healing.” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo

“No matter where we are, the ground between us will always be sacred ground.“ —Fr. Henri Nouwen

“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.” —Gretel Ehrlich

“‪The fact that these words and the jumble of lines that create their letters has no real, inherent meaning outside of a human context, yet they hum with life, is a wonderful reminder that what we imagine can easily become real and powerful simply because we decide it should be so.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Writing at the library. Surrounded by thousands of books, windows into other minds. Some of these writers are living. Some are not. Neatly ordered rectangles of concentrated human life and intellect. A book is certainly a kind of ghost and libraries are pleasantly haunted places.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” —Virginia Woolf

I know nothing, except what everyone knows —
If there when Grace dances, I should dance.
—W.H. Auden

“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”
—Charles de Lint

“The innocence of our childhood lives on, in each one of us, no matter how old or battered we may be. Still that original goodness, that simple goodness, remains within us. Our best nature never grows old. What the Spirit first intended us to be is still there, peeping out from wrinkled eyes, caught in a quick glance in the mirror: the laughing, shining, curious child who lives again. And again and again. For we are made of the intention of heaven, a part of the perfect life at the center of all creation. Watch for your inner self, the ageless soul, and see it smiling back at you, like a little child caught beside the cookie jar.” —Steven Charleston

Taste the Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Today’s prompt offers a choice, to write a Seize the Day or a Survive the Day poem. Here’s my response:

i don’t want to seize the day
so much as to
take it gently in my hands
like a round red and yellow apple
admire its shiny surface
feel the smoothness of its skin
then take a bite
taste the tang
the sweetness
the perfection of it
know that each bite
will be sweeter than the last

Gratitude List:
1. Apples
2. Blankets
3. Red curtains
4. This quote, by Brené Brown: “You will always belong anywhere you show up as yourself and talk about yourself and your work in a real way.”
5. This other quote by Brené Brown: “Strong back. Soft Front. Wild Heart.” I might want to get that as a tattoo.
May we walk in Beauty!

“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer

Solace is your job now.”
—Jan Richardson

Joy Harjo:
“When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”

“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.”
―Meridel Le Sueur

“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.”
―Madeleine L’Engle

“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …

…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom

“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” —Robert Frost

“I believe war is a weapon of persons with personal power, that is to say, the power to reason, the power to persuade, from a position of morality and integrity ; and that to go to war with an enemy who is weaker than you is to admit you possess no resources within yourself to bring to bear on your fated.” —Alice Walker

“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves.” —Cassius, from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare

“Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the River.” ––Proverb

“Perhaps too much sanity may be madness.” —from ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes

Redux

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

There was a little game going around Facebook recently in which you determine the name of your craft beer by using your grandfather’s profession and a word that you don’t quite understand. I think mine might be Harnessmaker’s Redux. I know redux means remix or retry or rework, sort of, but it always feels like there’s some edgy mystery meaning in there. Today’s prompt is to remix a poem from earlier in the month. I’ve rewritten my poem about wooing the muse. I think I may prefer the original, but this month is about the way the daily deadlines push me to play with words and sounds in new ways. If I don’t get any “good” poems out of this month, I have already expanded my voice, pushed myself out of some ruts. But I really hope I can glean at least one or two good ones from November’s hoard.

how to woo the muse

woo her with muchness
or nothing at all
woo her with wise
nonsensical prattle
with the way sound crashes
upon sound upon sound
upon sound upon sound
ringing from line to line
singing a fine tune
say her name often, say
i would have written, but my muse. . .
say, the muse is a harsh moon
a mysterious mistress, sing odes
to the moon but mean muse
pretend not to care
write a masterpiece
of utter garbage
pretend not to care
but as they say the best way
is simply to put your butt
in the chair

Gratitude List:
1. Commiseration
2. I am pretty sure that was Raven rowing through the sky above me on my way to Hershey this morning
3. Today’s Literacy Conference in Hershey–lots of great ideas to enliven my teaching
4. My colleagues
5. Free books! So many books!
May we walk in Beauty!

“Never laugh at live dragons.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” —Aristotle

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” —Mark Twain

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” —Aristotle

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” —Anais Nin

“Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best thing to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change.” —Michelle Obama

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” —Amelia Earhart

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —Lucille Ball

“Learn how to take criticism seriously but not personally.” —Hillary Clinton

“Like a great starving beast, my body is quivering, fixed on the scent of light.” —Hafiz

“Identity is a story carried in the body.” —Sophia Samatar

“Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine … and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not less divine …”
—W.B. Yeats

“The heart is your student, for love is the only way we learn.”
—Rumi

Poet Joy Harjo, from 2012:
“Visited with my cousin George Coser, Jr yesterday at the kitchen table. He’s a gift. Always something profound among the stories. The sacred lies at the root of the mundane. And every word is a power element. Each word or sound, whether thought, written or spoken grows our path, the path of our generation, the children, grandchildren, the Earth. . . . We become the ancestors. A sense of play gives a lightness of being. So get out there and play—and be kind while you’re at it. To yourself, too.”

Help me to journey beyond the familiar
and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways
and break fresh ground with You.

Christ of the mysteries, I trust You
to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know
that my times, even now, are in Your hand.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You.
—The Prayer of St. Brendan (attributed to Brendan)

The Wild Geese
by Wendell Berry

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer’s end. In time’s maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed’s marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

Making Time

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 5 Comments

Today’s Prompt is to write about Time. Since I spoke this morning at the UU congregation of York about witches and heretics, I’ll write about Ritual Time. And today marks the moment when I have caught up on all the time I lost a week ago when I missed poeming for several days.

Out of Time
Step into the circle
circle of stones
circle of trees
circle of mushrooms
circle of friends
circle of women
circle of witches

Step into the space
between earth and fire
between water and air
into the realm of spirit
and center and mystery

and step out of time
where birth and death
soul and sense
heart and mind
magic and the mundane
meet and dance together

Blessed Be!

Yesterday’s Prompt was to write a Response Poem. Here’s a little bit of a poem:

Remember Who You Are
What was Mother Mary’s response,
I wonder,
when child Jesus sassed her?

Did she place a hand on hip,
grin, and say,
“Remember, Child of Mine, I made you!”?

Did she heave a sigh to heaven,
shrug,
and wag a finger in the errant child’s face?

Did she remind him once again,
“Remember,
remember who you are.”

Gratitude List:
1. A lovely morning at UUCY
2. I have found a new Weeping Beech to love
3. The crows are back in town!
4. Leftover ugali for lunch
5. Anticipating a long-awaited journey
May we walk in Beauty!

Good advice from my friend Barb: “Find and wear your orange hat honey. There are 750,000 deer hunters in the yard today.”

“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.”
—Nayyira Waheed
***””
“Only those who attempt the absurd
will achieve the impossible.”
—M. C. Escher

Blessing for the Visitor
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

May you who wander, who sojourn, who travel,
may you who make your way to our door
find rest for your tired feet and weary heart,
food to fill your bellies and to nourish your minds,
and company to bring you cheer and inspiration.
May you find comfort for your sorrows,
belonging to ease your loneliness,
and laughter to bring you alive.

And when your feet find themselves again upon the road,
may they remember the way back to our door.

“A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth. That this body of ours is the panchabhuta—the five elements that make the universe and make our bodies. The simple act of sowing a seed, saving a seed, planting a seed, harvesting a crop for a seed is bringing back this memory-this timeless memory of our oneness with the Earth and the creative universe. There’s nothing that gives me deeper joy than the work of protecting the diversity and the freedom of the seed.” —Vandana Shiva

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” —George McGovern

More Catching Up to Do

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’m going to try to catch up on a few more poems tonight. The first was tow write a poem titled ________ Cycle. Sometimes these toss-offs that happen when I am trying to work fast actually help me find my way through the status quo images and rhythms that keep me in a rut. This one’s a little weird but I kind of love it.

Insomnia Cycle
sleep deep keep the sheep
in hopeful motion don’t stop
don’t drop the sleep mop
help the slumber tumble
let it rumble through the
roaring snoring through
the aching hip the dip in
deep sleep dreaming stay
mellow on the pillow stay

Another one was to write a Refresh poem. I’m really enjoying these free association pieces, following a random trail, and letting the poem take the reins. Little stories happen here, and I don’t know where they come from exactly, but there’s something that feels true inside them even when they aren’t my own actual stories.

Refresh
my memory: how do i
know you and what did you say
when i saw you that time
in the little cafe south of town?

what was that thing you did
when you hit the end of your rope?
did you ever find hope in the midst
of that awful despair?

where did you go when you left me
that morning as day was just
dawning and the world opened out
into spirals of chance?

did you dance in the snowstorm?
how did you keep warm and
how did you know what it took
to survive?

Home ______ is the theme of the next prompt.

Homebody
Somebody homebody
fiddly dogsbody
odd-jobs factotum
Friday’s girl jack
of all trades fix-it
assistant and
homebody’s domain

Gratitude List:
1. Weaver Family Thanksgiving Dinner: Tanzanian ugali and mchuzi with beans and rice and collard greens
2. A family joke that just will not die, but gets funnier and funnier
3. That moon, and the planets
4. The circle of antlers on the deer skull on the stump
5. This season of rest
May we walk in Beauty!

“What if our religion was each other? If our practice was our life? What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church? If holy water – the rivers, lakes, and oceans? What if meditation was our relationships? If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was knowledge? If love was the center of our being.” ―Ganga White

“Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” —Rousseau

“It is wonderful when you don’t have the fear, and a lot of the time I don’t. . . . I focus on what needs to be done instead.” —Wangari Maathai

“I will take my chances with you, with all of you, from any country or any condition, who believe a brighter day for humanity is possible, who open your hearts and minds to a broader vision of diversity, who serve the cause of kindness and speak the language of healing. I will make my lodge with you. I will be honored to call you my relatives. I will face tomorrow by your side, whatever that day may bring, and together we will make our witness, until the wind chases the sun from the sky and the stars begin to sing.” —Steven Charleston

“Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.”
— Robert Bly

“Let my anger be the celebration we were never / supposed to have.” —Jacqui Germain

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness. It’s right in front of me, if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.
—Brené Brown

“The eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.” —Terry Tempest Williams

“You’ve seen my descent.
Now watch my rising.”
—Rumi

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.”—Thomas Merton

“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” —Mary Oliver

“Attention is what matters. What we are living through is a time of grotesque inattention. The very act of taking heed, of paying attention, is a political act.” —Kathleen Jamie

Playing Catch Up

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’m trying to catch up on some of the poems I missed during the frantic days of last week.

One prompt was to write an Even poem. I began with the word, just followed the sounds without trying to force a meaning, until about halfway through, when I began to realize what the poem was about:

Farewell to the Faerie Child
Even now as I leave
through the window
I know you believe
that I grow as I go
into something stranger
maybe more dangerous
or greater than the safe
little waif of your imagining
dashing through wind-riven
shallows and groves
facing the dangers
of hailstorms and snow
to dance in the storm
and prance in the gale
and be ever the puck
of your next faerie tale.

One prompt was to write an Animal Poem. I turned myself into a bloodhound, still trying to figure out the starting juice for a poem.

On the Trail
There never was a perfect answer
to how to begin, how to set down the line
and follow it, like a hound on a scent trail
nose to the ground, after a sound, a sense,
an indefinable inside nudge.

This one is sort of a toss-off, but a fun word-game, and probably a learning experience, too. The prompt was to write a “customized” poem, so I took a Shakespearean sonnet, kept the first and last word of each line (with a couple tweaks), and customized each line to suit my purpose. I would definitely like to try this again, with a little more time and effort.

Customizing Shakespeare’s Sonnet 78
So, this is one way to invoke the Muse
And seek new pathways for my verse.
As technique I use or hope to use
And long to see the writer’s block disperse.
This method just might help my lines to sing
And teach my words to launch and fly,
Have given rhythm to my poet’s wing
And taught the lion of my phrasing majesty.
Yet down the plodding line I fast compile,
Whose tortured syntax does not work for me:
In search of my own voice and style,
And I am just a Shakespeare wannabe;
But to work this way will certainly advance
My style from basic ignorance.

Gratitude List:
1. Sheep on the opposite ridge of the hollow
2. Rich and deep conversations about the inner world
3. Having my say
4. A day that feels sort of like a retreat
5. Thanksgiving leftovers supper (I’m going to try that thing where you add a couple eggs and some broth to your stuffing, and press it in a waffle maker.)
May we walk in Beauty!

“You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them.
That is how prayer works.” —Pope Francis

“Allow dark times to season you.” —Hafiz

“I don’t have to respond whenever provoked.
No one does.
Steward your energy well.
We have justice work to do.
And strategy to outline.
And self-care to prioritize.
And love to live.
It’s okay to let provocateurs leave empty-handed.”
—Bernice King

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor—such is my idea of happiness.” —Leo Tolstoy

“I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness. It’s right in front of me, if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.” —Brené Brown

“Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!” —Mary Oliver

“I don’t have to figure it all out. I don’t have to be perfect for every moment. I just need to be Present. I just need to show up.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider (My past self is preaching to my present self.)

“The ego forgets that it’s supposed to be the little traveler with its bindle bag over its shoulder, following behind [not ahead] the radiant Soul who walks as more wise, more tender, more loving, more peaceful trailblazer throughout our lives.
.
Ego aspires sometimes to wear the garments of the Soul, which are way too big, making the ego trip over the miles of radiant robes it tries to wrap itself in, instead of following the light those robes give off. And tending to the Soul’s needs, the Soul’s directions.
Yet with Soul in the lead, and ego following the lead of the Soul, then we can fulfill the vision of the Holy People…” —Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world are seeking one another.” —Teilhard de Chardin

“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ―Oscar Levant

“Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906]

“There are real world implications to ‘just having opinions’ and those implications almost always involve doing deep harm to marginalized communities.” —Kaitlin Shetler

I Give Thanks

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’m preaching at the UU Congregation of York on Sunday, and I spent my writing time today on that instead of catching myself up in the poem-realm. I won’t be too rule-based or strict with myself if I don’t manage to catch up on all the prompts. Today’s prompt is to write an appreciation poem. I went sort of liturgical with it. And since it’s in the form of a list of things I am grateful for, it will double as my Gratitude List for today:

For golden autumn sun,
shining aslant through golden leaves:
I give thanks.
For the deer who stood in the corn field
and watched us drive by in the dusk:
I give thanks.
For the two cats curled into commas,
back to back and purring:
I give thanks.
For the black shadow of the pileated woodpecker
swooping into the hilltop oak:
I give thanks.
For stone and wind and flame and flow,
for the Spirit that enlivens and inspires:
I give thanks.
For those we have lost, whose lives filled our own
with so much joy, with so much life:
I give thanks.
For those still with us, whose presence
is a balm and a comfort:
I give thanks.
For love, that it may stand against
the tides of malice and destruction:
I give thanks.

“The winds will blow their own freshness into you,
and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you
like the leaves of Autumn.”
—John Muir

“Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls. ” —Ursula Le Guin

“The mother tongue is language not as mere communication but as relation, relationship. It connects. It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting.

It is written, but not by scribes and secretaries for posterity: it flies from the mouth on the breath that is our life and is gone, like the outbreath, utterly gone and yet returning, repeated, the breath the same again always, everywhere, and we all know it by heart.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

“Who would I be if I didn’t live in a world that hated women?” —Jessica Valenti

“The heart is right to cry
even when the smallest drop of light, of love, is taken away
Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream—in a dignified silence,
but you are right to do so in any fashion…until God returns to you.”
―Hafiz (Ladinsky)

“All water is holy water.”
―Rajiv Joseph

“The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.”
―Arundhati Roy

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.
Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”
―Scott Adams

“You know what breaks me, when someone is visibly excited about a feeling or an idea or a hope or a risk taken, and they tell you about it but preface it with: “Sorry, this is dumb but—.” Don’t do that. I don’t know who came here before me, or who conditioned you to think you had to apologize or feel obtuse. But not here. Dream so big it’s silly. Laugh so hard it’s obnoxious. Love so much it’s impossible. And don’t you ever feel unintelligent. And don’t you ever apologize. And don’t you ever shrink so you can squeeze yourself into small places and small minds. Grow. It’s a big world. You fit. I promise.”
―Owen Lindley

“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than our fears and prejudices.” ―Jimmy Carter

“The reality is we have more in common with the people we’re bombing than the people we’re bombing them for.” ―Russell Brand

“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ”
―Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire